Whale Skeleton On Ocean Floor

However what came as a surprise to ocean researchers was the finding that dead whales support entire ecosystems.

Whale skeleton on ocean floor.

The nautilus team of deep sea explorers found a whale skeleton on the pacific ocean floor off the california coast in the monterey bay national marine sanctuary. When whales die in the ocean their bodies eventually sink to the bottom. The gray whale skeleton displayed on our ocean bluff comes from an animal that stranded in south san francisco bay in 1990. The discovery was made almost a mile below the surface in an undersea crater and includes the find of at least nine new species of deep sea organisms thriving on the bones.

Animals including octopus were. On the sea floor these carcasses can create complex localized ecosystems that supply sustenance to deep sea organisms for decades. A five meter long whale carcass has been spotted on the pacific ocean floor by divers from the monterey bay national marine sanctuary who had been researching a large grouping of female octopuses. Watch marine life feast on a complete whale skeleton on the ocean floor it s spooky season on the seafloor too the team discovered a whale fall while exploring davidson seamount off central.

Marine biologists have for the first time found a whale skeleton on the ocean floor near antarctica giving new insights into life in the sea depths. This skeleton illustrates the unique feeding posture of gray whales. Once the body comes to rest biologists refer to this as a whale fall as you would guess other fish and sea animals initially eat the meat off the carcass. Whale skeletons were first discovered in wadi al hitan or the.

A whale fall occurs when the carcass of a whale has fallen onto the ocean floor at a depth greater than 1 000 m 3 300 ft in the bathyal or abyssal zones. Desert where the ancient fossilised remains of nature s gentle giants lie on the floor of a long lost ocean. This is unlike in shallower waters where a whale carcass will be consumed by scavengers over a relatively.